


all gone

by scionblad



Series: the village atop the hill [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Post-Recall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 08:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13948059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scionblad/pseuds/scionblad
Summary: Genji is hit with a hack that leaves him debilitated, and Hanzo is reminded of ghosts past.





	all gone

**Author's Note:**

> some asterisks on tags:
> 
> JESSE MCCREE/GENJI SHIMADA — this is pretty minor that i didn't bother tagging so not to move focus away from the focus (hanzo) but if you are averse to it, it's there.

Hanzo had been climbing, scaling the brick face like he was flying, when he saw Genji, who _was_ flying—even if it was only his cyborg limbs providing him an extra push upwards—tumbling head over feet towards the ground like a shooting star. Likewise, Hanzo fell, too, fingers slipping on the brick, and it was only his years of trained reflexes that enabled him to land in a roll, but that was his whole body, and his hands were still shaking.

In a yellow glow, Mercy sped towards that spot where Genji had fallen. A flashbang lit up a short distance away accompanied by a distinct drawling shout of “Genji!”

It was a six-man team like Overwatch tended to favor. They were trying to hold the line from a payload that threatened the new LúmeriCo plant, but in that instant Hanzo didn’t care, because all he could hear was his pulse pounding between his ears and the iron tang of oil and blood in his nostrils. His legs only seemed to carry him towards the thing that sent fear aflurry in his chest.

He jumped down from a building to see Mercy’s staff emitting a yellow stream towards Genji’s prone body. McCree knelt next to Genji’s shoulder, his human hand resting on where Genji’s shoulder blade would be. The cyborg was twitching, as if the strength had been sapped right out of his metal and flesh.

“It’s not healing,” Mercy said with frustration. Her voice was barely discernible above the rush in Hanzo’s head.

“It’s not a wound,” said Genji, from the ground. “It’s something else. My body isn’t responding like it should.”

His voice sounded like it had been cut in half. Hanzo dropped his bow, his hands shaking. They might have been covered in blood.

“What do you mean?” said Mercy, from very far away.

He had come from the back, slowly. He remembered that much. The slash had gone upwards, and the sword was finely made enough that the cut was clean, though not without a spray that stained that scroll. _Dragon head, snake tail._

“Can you move?”

“Not like I should.” And Genji tried to jump twice, once off the ground, and once in air, but his feet met no resistance on the second jump, and his throwing hand was crushed under his body of steel and synthetics. “My jump has been severely hindered.”

“ _Genji!_ ”

It smelled like blood. He couldn’t make it stop. In the distance, he saw the green of his brother’s hair.

He ran. He couldn’t make it stop. He needed it to stop.

“Hanzo!”

It was the wrong voice, but it kept screaming his name, over and over, and he _knew_ why, but it was too loud. The ground under him was either made of tatami or stucco. He climbed, trying to get away, trying to fly and feel the wind under his feet.

“Shimada!”

It was still the wrong voice, deeper, a drawl, the vowels all wrong, but the anger was familiar. He shot an arrow, listening to the vibrations. The enemies were outlined in a thick red, and he readied his shot—

“ _Hanzo!_ ”

Blinded, he shot an arrow. That voice was one he knew. Its tenor stung his ears and shoulders and fingers.

The enemy fell. _Stop the shouting._

“Stop!”

Pleading.

“ _Stand behind my shield!_ ”

“Brother!”

There was nothing for him to see. He screwed up his eyes, trying to relieve the squeezing in his chest, shooting only by instinct. The enemies fell like—like cherry blossoms.

The flowers had been blooming in a light shower that day. They had decided to view the blossoms in the courtyard of Shimada Castle earlier that week. The doors to the patios had been flung wide open to greet the crisp spring breeze with open arms, and the sky was cloudless and joyfully blue.

Was he really so weak in spirit, to deny his own strength of will on that day?

He should not have inherited. It should have died the moment he decided he would show respect to the damned lieutenants of the clan who did not deserve it.

The flesh had been carved like it was air, his brother’s voice raw like needles scraping his skin. The muscles and blood in his arms felt unbearably heavy, and Hanzo struggled, his back screaming as he drew again and again.

“You idiot!” An drawl laced with rage. “You’ll get us all killed!”

Another, another, another—the noise wouldn’t stop, and it pitched to a keening so loud that he desperately fired arrow after arrow, his muscles screaming for the release that came with violence and exertion. He did not see people, just targets, moving flashes of red, homes for the sharp points of his arrows.

“ _Brother!_ ”

A hand grabbed his arm in a vice and jerked him behind cover of an alleyway, and he could feel the sharp, acerbic yellow stream of the Caduceus Staff through his skin. Reinhardt and Brigitte had backed up, their shields creating a wall over the opening towards the main street, while D.VA’s mech shot its rockets out in front.

“What the fuck were you doing?” spat McCree in a low voice, laced tightly with venom. “Going in recklessly like that!”

He moved like he was going to spit on Hanzo, or do something entirely and justifiably worse, if not for Genji’s inhumanly strong grip and a slight shake of the head.

Mercy finished her Caduceus treatment, satisfied with its job, and Hanzo, feeling simultaneously haggard and awake all at the same time, heaved himself to his feet. “Sorry,” he said shortly, knowing in jaw-clenching shame it was not even close to enough.

Genji removed his mask and looked at him. “You all right?” he said in Japanese.

The scars were dark around his eyes. Hanzo felt his throat and chest close up. “Yeah,” he managed. “I’m fine.”

Reality swam in his vision, but he could make out things as they were again. Genji put his mask back on, the lights on his cyborg body glowing warmly, and Mercy, feeling a hand up and down his hand and arm, spoke to him in hushed tones, asking about whether his proper body functions had returned yet. Hanzo tried to catch his breath, trying not to drown in how exhausted he felt, how easy it might be to die.

It had felt so real. Like he was young again, hardly even thirty, like he still used the sword. The callus on that flap of skin between his thumb and forefinger had not quite gone away in entirety.

He hadn’t done it right. He couldn’t do anything right.

McCree glared at him once more, then turned his attention to the rest of the team. “We’re almost there,” he said with none of his characteristic easygoing playfulness. “A final push should do it. Reinhardt, D.VA, your initiative. We’ll follow. Genji, how are you feeling?”

Genji flexed his hand. “I think I can access my abilities again. It feels like something mechanical rather than a flesh wound.”

“Mechanical,” muttered Mercy to herself, eyebrows pulling together.

“We can worry about it later. Let’s go.”

  


 

 

 

The ride in the hovercraft back to Gibraltar was long. The debrief was short. Dr. Ziegler’s eyes were worn and weary. Genji’s mask showed no expression. McCree sulked.

“Do you have any more intel on what happened?” said Winston, his large dark hands perched under his chin, thinking.

“No,” said Ziegler. “We believe, though, that it was the result of a hack. The traces left by the hacker in question seem deliberate. The effects seemed to wear off after a certain amount of time, but precautionary steps should be taken to ensure no repeat incidents.”

Genji did not move, nor did Hanzo. McCree’s fingers twitched like he wanted a smoke.

“Very well,” said Winston. “Genji, we may have to keep you in the medical wing for a few days, just to observe and collect data, and make sure nothing becomes compromised.”

“Of course,” said Genji obediently.

“Dr. Ziegler, will you oversee?”

“I will.”

“Good.” Winston pushed his glasses up his nose and nodded at them. “Dismissed.”

He seemed tired. As they filed out, Athena’s calming voice spoke to him in hushed tones, and Winston said something back, muffled by the closing of the door. Wilhelm left with the younger Lindholm, who was waiting outside, and Genji bounded after McCree towards the base’s canteen, promising to stop by the medical wing later. Ziegler, apparently too tired to give Hanzo her usual glare of mild disdain, left for her office, making notes to herself. He was left to wander the base by himself.

McCree did not usually lose his temper like he did just hours earlier. He was often chosen to captain operations due to his experience, skill, and unflappable composure. Hanzo had never seen him burn with an anger like a wildfire barely contained. His gut twitched with a feeling, but he had no energy to ponder further, not when the image of Genji’s body prone, weak and unmoving, haunted him like it did.

It was unspoken, when he was a child, to wear a careful mask over his emotions. Strength could yet be found in anger, perhaps, but every discipline he had ever learned favored a clean carve, happiness and sadness and fear severed neatly at the bone.

It was funny how taking things away made the burden heavier.

Sleep clamored at his eyes, but he dreamed fitfully on the craft ride back, and he had no wish to revisit them again. Instead, he climbed to the highest point in the base, on top of several units overlooking the sea, and sat, his bow placed gently at his side beside his left hand.

For several hours, no one bothered him. The sun set over the Mediterranean slowly. The wind swirled above and around him freely, but he still could hear the depths of the inky water hundreds of feet below him call to him in its sleepy, comforting allure.

The stars had started creeping over the purple sky when he went back, his skin bumpy from the chill. He passed Genji’s room, and, overhearing voices from inside, one arguing and one calming, stopped.

“Look, I don’t care whether or not he’s traumatized— _you_ got traumatized, too—”

“I have forgiven him—”

“I _know_ but it doesn’t—it doesn’t matter!”

“McCree—”

“Do you think I’m supposed to feel sorry for that bitch? I don’t!”

“ _McCree_ —”

“He jeopardized the mission, freaking out like that!”

The guilt pooled somewhere between his chest and stomach, dense like tar. Hanzo put a hand on the wall, trying to remain steady.

“I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me, what’s wrong with that?”

“We have to work together.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like him!”

A pause. Then, “I understand. He is not exactly a people person, as you say. But he is my brother.”

Hanzo swallowed. The back of his eyes itched and watered.

Another, longer pause. “I’m just—it’s not fair, what he did to you. You’re too kind to forgive him.”

“He is family.”

McCree sounded resigned. “I know, I—I guess I just don’t understand that.”

“Maybe not, but you understand caring about someone, don’t you?”

A small laugh. That was enough for Hanzo to hear. He left, feeling an odd warm feeling down to his toes. He was fine. He was safe. It would take time.

The dreams did not bother him that night.

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall ever think about how ‘dragon head, snake tail’ is a japanese/chinese idiom that describes an anticlimatic situation? try harder next time blizz.
> 
> anyway, this fic was brought to you by the following sponsors:
> 
> 1) buffed sombra hack affecting passive abilities like genji’s double jump :thinking:
> 
> 2) [this tweet](https://twitter.com/thanatosAria/status/970713030471376896)
> 
> 3) the mother mother song that lends its name to this fic’s title
> 
> 4) my neurotic ass writing this whole thing in A VERY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME. hence the super roughness.
> 
> EDIT 14 MAR 2018: i finally went back and fixed tiny edits thanks for bearing w me
> 
> thank you for reading, though, if you did!


End file.
